[21] Sailing to Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees -
Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
-- William Butler Yeats
|
from 'The Tower', 1928
Another Yeats poem, so soon after the first one? Yes indeed. As Amit
commented on my very first posting, "Yeats' peoms resonate with my
feelings in a way that few others' poems do." I couldn't agree more.
There's a certain magic to his words which I can't even begin to
describe, much less analyze or understand. Suffice to say that this list
will be seeing a lot more of Yeats in the future :-).
Biographical Note (from good old Louis Untermeyer):
Born at Sandymount, Dublin, in 1865, the son of John B. Yeats, the Irish
artist, the greater part of William Butler Yeats' childhood was spent in
Sligo. Here he became imbued with the power and richness of native
folk-lore; he drank in the racy quality through the quaint fairy stories
and old wives' tales of the Irish peasantry. (Later he published a
collection of these same stories.)
It was in the activities of a "Young Ireland" society that Yeats became
identified with the new spirit; he dreamed of a national poetry that
would be written in English and yet would be definitely Irish. In a few
years he became one of the leaders in the Celtic revival. He worked
incessantly for the cause, both as propagandist and playwright; and,
though his mysticism at times seemed the product of a cult rather than a
Celt, his symbolic dramas were acknowledged to be full of a haunting,
other-world spirituality. (See Preface.) The Hour Glass (1904), his
second volume of "Plays for an Irish Theatre," includes his best one-act
dramas with the exception of his unforgettable The Land of Heart's
Desire (1894). The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) contains several of his
most beautiful and characteristic poems.
Another Biographical Note, this one from George Macbeth:
... Yeats shared [Kipling's and d'Annuncio's] fascination with poetry as
a public art, almost a branch of rhetoric... [He] is now generally
regarded as the greatest English poet of the century...
... Yeats is not, however, an English poet at all; he is an Irish poet.
His work can be seen as falling into three periods: the early, rather
misty, mythological poems of the Celtic twilight period, the concrete
particularising poems of his middle years, and the more dandified,
violemt mythological poems which occupied him at the end of his life...
His greatest successes [were in] writing about his friends and he causes
for which they spoke, fought and died... Irish history and Irish
politics came alive to Yeats through the doings of people he knew and
loved. His best work is a commentary on the history of a whole country
at the establishment of its freedom, a period of agonising crisis seen
through the eyes of a particularly sensitive and involved member of
it...
Macbeth's comments on 'Sailing to Byzantium':
... the myth of Byzantium as a magical city where life was entirely
transmuted into art inspired Yeats to some of his finest poetic
flights... He seems to give life beyond this world a special sort of
concrete grace and ceremony...
Finally, my own (somewhat disconnected) thoughts:
There's a shimmering, almost ethereal grace to this poem... at the same
time, I can't help being dazzled by its richness and complexity of
allusion and connotation... every time I read it, a thousand historical
and mythologial associations spring to my mind... the language is
vintage Yeats, as vibrant and rich and bewitchingly beautiful as ever...
all in all, a true work of art...
thomas.
From: "Ron and Shirley Johnson" <rljohnson@>
I have found a new poetry contest that I think you might be interested
in it's called Project Frost it's being done by a literary student in
Iowa email your questions to cojo3@ just thought I would pass
the information on and you should do the same.
From: "Rich Kalsi" <surya@>
When I first read this poem in college, I was immediately struck by the
controlled vibrancy of Yeats' language. How he achieves its effects
upon the soul still remains a mystery to me. But rather than attempt to
explain this mystery by throroughly analyzing its poetic forms or its
literary allusions, I want it to remain a mystery. For me the
unexplained aspects of the poem give it a power and trajectory I feel
analysis would only destroy. As I sat in class and heard the words
pouring from my professor's lips, what appealed to me immediately was
the poem's somberness. It doesn't attempt to glorify life, nor the
after-life. Its reduction of a complex metaphysical idea into tangible
images culled from experience makes it an eternal poem, one whose
relevance will never be dulled by time.
From: Cer1115@
I was asined this poem to do an essay on and I have no idea where to start on
this poem. I liked it after I read it a few time. Cathy
From: =?iso-8859-2?Q?Radek_Niezgódka?= <radeknie@>
Hi, I would like to know something more about "Sailing to Byzantium" and
"The Wild Swans at Coole". About emotional and historical background of
these poems and generally what inspired Yeats to write them. e-mail:
radeknie@
From: "Florian Frisch" <ff037983@>
Philip Roth makes a quotation from this Yeats poem the essence - and
title - of one of his novels: The dying animal.
That becomes very interesting intertextuality, readig Roth's novel and
the lines: "Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And fastened to a
dying animal".
From: MrsMaster27@
Hi I would like to know more about "Sailing to Byzantium" mrsmaster27@
From: "Rhanda Dormeus" <RDormeusRN@>
Hi,
I am struggling through an analytical essay for this poem (Sailing to Byzantium. Please help, I am not understanding it.
R. Dormeus
From: Mieneke Jansen <w.jansendegraaf@>
For everyone who doesn't understand the meaning of this poem, please
visit : http://homepage.tinet.ie/~splash/s2b.html
Mariëlle
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<DIV><FONT face"Arial size"2>For everyone who doesn't understand the
meaning of
this poem, please visit : <A
href""http://homepage.tinet.ie/~splash/s2b.html">http://homepage.tinet.ie/~splash/s2b.html</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Mariëlle</DIV></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>
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From: Archaeopteryx <archaeopteryx@>
Here's another meaning:
> http://members.aol.com/apdaypd/young/uscihas.htm
From: "Peter Chant" <peter.chant@>
Hi
Studied this poem at UBC, university of BC 1977 - yeah I am old...I can
relate to "
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick,Love the poem.Thanks for posting it.Peter.
From: "calamity" <gbrat@>
I work in a nursing home. Once we had a retired teacher living there. He
had dementia and we often saw him ragibg and striking out at staff.I
once heard him repeat the line about old men and recited the lines
following. For once he looked at me and smiled.